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The Long Way Round – Day 09

With a hat-tip to the 2004 TV mini-series from Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. This is the ninth day in a series of posts written about our 2016 EV Roadtrip written in the same manner as our 2015 trip. Here, There, and EVerywhere Trip – Day 01, i.e. summaries written for each day of the trip, published each day, this time two months from the day of the trip. It may seem funny to some to have a summer trip published at the start of the Fall, think of it as some daily entertainment for those that are back in their offices thinking about their past summer trips that could have been or thinking about their next trip.

So, why the long way round? Well… We got four referrals on the Fourth Tesla Referral Program (May 30, 2016 to July 15, 2016) and we expected to get an invite to the Gigafactory Party, so we thought to start our trip and go to Reno (a nearly 500 mile direct drive from home) via the Pacific Northwest (about a 1600 mile detour) with the intermediate goal of attending the EV Roadmap 9 Conference in Portland, visiting family who were spending time in Seattle, WA and family in Vancouver, BC before turning back for the party.

So, what do we have in store today? Today we continue to head South toward Reno for the Gigafactory Party on the 29th. We’ve also registered to do some of the events for TMC Connect 2016. Our first event is the Dinner Reception on Thursday evening for TMC Connect 2016. Rather than take a different route back to Reno, we’ve decided to stay on the same Interstate 5 route.

The main reason for staying on this route is we are trying to meetup with many fellow EV folks who reached out but were unable to get together during the Northbound journey.

Day 9 – Vancouver, BC Southbound to as far as we can.. July 26, 2016

We got a good night’s sleep and fully charged at our hotel before we rolled out.

Had $30 CAD left in my pocket, and since we’re not planning on being in Canada anytime in the near future, decided to go ahead and apply this cash to our hotel balance.

As I was settling up, it looks like another Model S was just moving in. Perhaps a single HPWC is all this location needs for now. I do believe that they just need a little more parking spots dedicated to the hotel. I’m quite aware that many EV travelers will need to be more cognizant of fellow EV travelers and make accommodations for folks to share a single HPWC. This means that they should be ready to move their vehicles when done charging (a good plan) or to at least provide their contact information if unable to do so easily (or both, an even better plan.)

Our range charge at start of today is at 252 miles, nearly the maximum that the car displays when fully charged.

And with that starting charge, we’re headed back to the United States… Same route, but hope to catch up with friends (and perhaps some Pokemon) along the way.

We make the border in rather quick time.

We opted to cross the border at the “touristy” crossing again. We got there around 10:00 AM.

There were lines again, but it felt like it was moving faster.

After all, we’re traveling in miles again! 😉

Somehow it feels like we’re traveling 1.6x faster on miles than we are in Kilometers!

This interesting sculpture was installed just behind the border crossing.

In all seriousness, the crossing back to the United States took about 35 minutes. That is quicker than the crossing into Canada. Additionally, our rear windows did roll back up unimpeded.

We headed back to Washington State and were accompanied by a famous VW Bug. It’s an ICE, but with Herbie, the Love Bug striping, I can forgive it a little.

Not that we needed a charge, but I did need to make a pit stop and were surprised to be greeted by a couple of friends.

Some free to use Aerovironment EVSEs at the first rest stop from Canada to Washington on I-5.

And it was sponsored by our good friends at Adopt-A-Charger! I already feel at home.

And quickly make it to our first supercharger stop of the day at Burlington, WA.

We had several potential meetups on the drive South, some of whom unfortunately were busy on a Tuesday to meet up, so we ended up missing them on this trip. One that was able to meet up was Tony Giannini and his wife Vanessa. Tony and Vanessa both drive Model X and were gracious enough to offer their HPWC for a charge and chat on the way down. Since we’re pretty well stocked on electrons around their part of Washington state, we just figured to stop off for a snack and chat instead.

Tony and I have exchanged twitter conversations on many things Tesla and T-Mobile (my preferred mobile provider since Voicestream did the bandwidth swap with Cingular and enterred the California market as T-Mobile) and were delighted to take them up on their offer. Besides… They said DONUTS. And who am I to turn THAT down!

They directed us to Top Pot Doughnuts and coffee and we met up with them and their kids.

The donut choices were excellent and the conversation was even better.

As is customary on these EV meetups, we checked out their car. (They brought one of their Model X)

Here’s a great shot of us with the cars.

We could have spent more time with them, but had to cut it short because we had the goal to be past Portland tonight and had tentatively scheduled some time to possibly meet some of the other contributors to Transport Evolved, Kate Walton-Elliott, in Olympia, WA, as well as TE’s editor-in-chief Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield, around Portland, OR, in real life. Both these meets were in flux for one reason or the other, and we hoped to be able to time it at a mutually convenient time and meet IRL.

Nikki was supposed to be on a panel the previous week at EV Roadmap, but had to cancel for personal reasons, and we have a chance to meet later today.

Southbound journey to Portland seemed to be faster to ditch Seattle altogether and we pass our Hilton in Bellevue, WA.

Yup, lots more traffic in the West.

This Eastern route has given us a better view of snow and glacier capped mountains, so that’s a plus.

And the traffic was so bad, we decided to follow the interesting alternate routes that was offered to us.

The beauty of GPS and a sense of adventure on these long roadtrips is the ability to get off the Interstate and see the countryside.

We got a text from our first potential meet with Kate Walton-Elliott, and unfortunately the timing wasn’t going to work. So, here’s to hoping for another chance to meet IRL.

In the meantime, we had hoped to catch some well recommended, Chef Jenn Louis stop around Olympia of Tacos La Fuente. Unfortunately, they’re a daytime only place and we arrived 15 minutes after they close the whole restaurant/bus down.

Needless to say, I was NOT HAPPY.

This is an unhappy selfie…

And we’re back in Centralia, WA for a supercharge.

We make a route to somewhere near Nikki’s part of Portland, as we were still “touch and go” on the meetup plans and wanted to make it as easy on her to come on out and chat.

We have a little bit of time around here… Unfortunately there’s a glare, but if you look to the right of the charger on the left, there is a bucket with a squeegee there that has been provided by a generous local for those of us traveling through Centralia, WA.

We didn’t avail ourselves of the squeegee as the car was relatively clean, and we headed onward…

…apparently toward where Lord Vader resides.

The better half has been obsessed with the logging/lumber industry on this trip and points out the tall trees.

It’s amazing to see all this green on the drive.

Even this bridge is green. It’s painted like the color of army tanks in old World War 2 movies.

We’re nearing Battle Ground, WA. Just an interesting name for a town, wonder what battles were fought there.

We’re nearing Oregon again.

Looks like we’re going to miss meeting Nikki IRL today. We’ll eventually meet-up, but not on this trip. Will have to continue corresponding over the ‘Net.

Since we are not meeting up with Nikki, we made plans to supercharge at Woodbury, OR. This was the supercharger that “surprised us” on Day Two of our Northbound journey when we were headed to EV Roadmap 9.

So, we stopped off and charged, had dinner next door at the Red Robin. We got to the location close to the closing time for the site sponsors and we felt like going to a chain that would be open longer.

While at the restaurant, we made plans for our next stop, and found the Hilton Garden Inn, Springfield, OR as a viable stop for us. The hotel is just around the corner from the Supercharger at Springfield/Eugene, OR that we charged in on our Northbound journey, but we felt like we can have the car charged while we sleep.

We made our lodging plans for the evening and did the drive from Woodbury to Springfield/Eugene, OR.

It was one of our shorter legs for today. We arrive at the hotel around 11:00 PM and were tired. One of the two chargers at the location was available, but the way the parking was configured meant that we would have to cross vehicles to charge and didn’t want to run “the risk.”

It’s important to note that our Gigafactory invite would not have been possible had folks not used our referral code. So, I have to thank those that were convinced to pick up a Tesla Model S or Model X and decided to save some money by using our referral code. So, if you’re as inclined as those that took us up on the offer, and in the market for a Tesla Model S or Model X, you can save $1,000 USD/$1,200 CAD/£750 GBP (and whatever the equivalent is in your market) if you use our referral code – http://ts.la/dennis5317.

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Dennis

rEVolutionary armed with a Tesla Model S S85 and a Tesla Roadster, when his wife let's him borrow it. Formerly driving a BMW Active E (2012-Feb to 2014-Feb).
Dennis has been driving EVs since he found himself on the BMW Active E trials on February 2012. As a result of his involvement in the Active E program, he became Accidentally Environmental. Aside from this blog, he often tweets @dennis_p. When not driving, he can be found on the following Tesla/EV forums - teslamotorsclub.com, teslamotors.com, and model3ownersclub.com as AEdennis or on speakev.com as Dennis. In the interest of full disclosure, Dennis has an inherent bias toward electric vehicles and has an investment in and is LONG Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
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